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Monday with Authors: Doug Bradley and Craig Werner

Tricia Vanderhoof, Correspondent
Published 5:02 p.m. ET Jan. 24, 2016

Doug Bradley, co-author of “We Gotta Get Out of This Place: The Soundtrack of the Vietnam War," was a correspondent during the war. He is pictured here in 1971.(Photo: ~Courtesy Doug Bradley)

Story Highlights

We Gotta Get Out of This Place was named Rolling Stone's #1 Best Music Book of 2015

Craig Werner is a Nominating Committee member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

Doug Bradley served in 'Nam in 1970 and 1971, and the Vietnam infantryman's average age was 18-19

Bruce Springsteen's The River concert on August 20, 1981, brought new attention to the challenges Vietnam veterans were facing

Floodgates opened. The testimony they received is visceral – the hope, the horror, the fear, anger, disillusion, sorrow – still as immediate as mortar fire.

Doug Bradley served in Vietnam as a combat correspondent in 1970 and 1971. He and Craig Werner, professor of Afro-American studies at University of Wisconsin-Madison, co-teach "The Vietnam Era: Music, Media, and Mayhem." They have written "We Gotta Get Out of This Place: The Soundtrack of the Vietnam War," just named Rolling Stone's number 1 Best Music Book of 2015.

We spent an hour together on the phone; Bradley in Madison, and Werner on vacation in Hawaii.

Mondays with Authors: Your book is meticulously researched; hundreds of interviews. The index alone is 17 pages. How did you tackle this wealth of material?

Bradley: As Jay Maloney says in the final Solo (individual narrative), there is no such thing as one Vietnam, there were more than two and a half million of them. Every soldier lived a different experience and what emerged was the music. Music was the conduit.

MwA: How did the book come about?

Werner: In 2003, members of the Deadly Writers Patrol writing group who met at the Madison Vet Center gravitated to a conversation we were having about our love of music, sharing stories about songs they associated with their tours. It became apparent this was something much larger.

MwA: In what way?

Bradley: There were so many complexities. The length of the war, different phases, so many causes of tension, race particularly, not just there but back home as well. And music at its heart.

MwA: Two phrases permeate the book: "In country" and "Back in the world." The gap between the two, the estrangement the boys felt, color every narrative. How did that translate?

Bradley: Their average age was 19, 20 and for most of these young guys, it was their first time away from home. They were completely unprepared for the conditions. Songs were how they kept their spirits going, their connection to those they left back in the world while they were in-country, whether in combat or not.

Doug Bradley is co-author of “We Gotta Get Out of This Place: The Soundtrack of the Vietnam War.” An Army correspondent during the war, he is pictured holding a 1972 edition of a paper he wrote for.(Photo: ~Courtesy Doug Bradley)

MwA: When radio was out, how did they cope?

Both laugh: However they could. Someone always had a guitar, or improvised an instrument, or they sang, hummed. Bootleg cassettes or tapes on cheap decks from the PX.

MwA: The cover is spot-on, white-on-red DYMO lettering over the photo. Who chose it?

Bradley: Jack Harrison, design and production manager at UMass Press. We talked about different images. It's a copyrighted picture but we paid for it. It's iconic, that rear shot of a marine waiting for a flight out of Khe Sanh in the worst early days (February 25, 1968), his guitar and M16 slung across his back.

MwA: It captures the ambivalence. What did you learn writing the book that you didn't know before?

Werner: Longing for home, the breadth of the soundtrack our vets connect with their experience. (Doug murmurs agreement) The war lasted such a long time, the sheer range of songs that overlap their tours, that's the thing that struck us both. And they came from every area of the U.S. so you had every type of music.

Craig Werner is co-author of “We Gotta Get Out of This Place: The Soundtrack of the Vietnam War.” He is a professor of Afro-American studies at University of Wisconsin-Madison,(Photo: ~Photo by Leslee Nelson)

MwA: Examples?

Both: "Davy Crockett," "Yellow Rose of Texas," Kingston Trio's "MTA" ("The Man Who Never Returned") Peter, Paul and Mary's "Leaving on a Jet Plane," Temptations' "My Girl;" church music; "On Top of Old Smokey." Plus so many songs relating to women not just girlfriends: moms and sisters, other females in their lives as well.

MwA: Why do you think the same tunes were mentioned again and again?

Bradley: Because each song had a different meaning for each person. And even the meaning of the same song often changed as the person’s experience changed.

Werner: Every tent was different, every hooch. What makes our book different – the real core – is that it acknowledges the differences, but with music as a source of connection.

MwA: The mood of the war reflected the changing mood of the country. Ebony magazine called 1967 the summer of 'Retha, Rap and Revolt. How did that affect the soldiers?

Bradley: There was so much racism between colors, class, and a predominantly high percentage of the casualties were lower-class minorities. Gerald McCarthy's Solo dealt with that. (McCarthy was 18 when he went overseas and barely 19 when he returned.)

MwA: (In "Bad Moon Rising") McCarthy writes, "Crackers burned a cross in front of Doc Brown's tent," but then also wonders, "Does music make us whole again? Looking back, I think now music brought us together." It sounds as if music helped heal some of the in-country hate?

Werner: It provided a connection, but also an escape.

An Army band gets its groove on during the Vietnam War.(Photo: ~Courtesy Doug Bradley)

MwA: Is there anything you're surprised someone hasn't asked you?

Bradley: No one's asked whether I was pro- or anti-war, but it doesn't matter. With everyone we've interviewed, there's been both sides, and all ways in between. We just got out of the way and let them tell their stories. Music sustained these stories and it let them get them the hell home.

Werner: No one's gonna read the book and come away with the idea that Vietnam was a good idea. People who were there all pretty much agree with that.

MwA: Craig, I have a question for you. You're a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Nominating Committee. Bon Jovi's from New Jersey. He's eligible. Why hasn't he been voted in?

Werner: We have no idea. No one knows who does the voting.

MwA: Craig, the Garden State is counting on you.

(Craig laughs)

MwA: Moving on – another Garden State rocker. Your book talks about Springsteen's crucial The River concert on August 20, 1981 when he called Bobby Muller onto the stage, where he paid tribute to the vets and the problems they face, the burdens they carry.

Both: There's no way to overemphasize the importance of what Springsteen did in L.A. He listened to people. He acknowledged that this is real and it's buried more deeply than anyone realizes

Listening is hard because we want to fix it. There's no way to fix it but the power of music is overwhelming. He provided that forum. He truly felt, 'There but for the grace of god go I, that's some other poor guy who just couldn't get out of it.' People got that.

MwA: Due to the advances in medicine and technology, we had just 58,307 fatalities in two decades. But there were 303,644 wounded. That has led to unprecedented ongoing veterans' issues. What support is there?

Bradley: What strikes us teaching our class, especially for the younger vets, men and women, is the tremendous strain and the distance between the rhetoric – the "Thank you for your service" clichés, appearances at airports or trotting out half-time at games – and what they're being forced to deal with. In the process of writing our book, we found that many who found it impossible to talk about their experiences could do it when we asked, "Do you have a song?" What was needed were places where people could tell their stories.

“We Gotta Get Out of This Place: The Soundtrack of the Vietnam War,” was written by Doug Bradley and Craig Werner.(Photo: Courtesy Bettmann/CORBIS)

MwA: Are there any?

Bradley: We stay connected with new organizations that continue to raise awareness. We're inspired by Dryhooch (military jargon for a hut or safe place to sleep during combat), a non-profit that provides peer and family support and counseling, by veterans, for veterans of all eras, in a café-like environment.

MwA: Where did Dryhooch start?

Werner: It was founded in Milwaukee in 2010 by Bob Curry, and more have branched out. Their Coffee Shop provides a gathering place to reconnect; it's free of alcohol, always a major problem for vets, and dedicated to helping warriors who survived the war, now survive the peace.

MwA: What's most important?

Both: To know that others share the same issues. That there are ways to make those connections, share those burdens.

MwA: You mention the women. So many more serve now than ever before. The ones who served in Vietnam (almost 7500) were referred to as Donut Dollies. Those you interviewed didn't seem to object to the term, although today the term seems somewhat demeaning. Tell us about them.

Both: There were rigorous qualifications and most (over 83 percent) were nurses, Red Cross volunteers there as morale boosters for the troops. They were mostly older than most of the guys they befriended because of the college requirement.

Bradley: Craig, have you never heard anyone complain about the term?

Werner: No, it was not a term they objected to, it was the way it was. They were very independent, there to do the job; they wanted to see for themselves. They were lifesavers. Many of them were anti-war. They had a connection with life back it he world and it was great to have them there.

Bradley: They were poised and smart and had enough camaraderie that they have their own reunions. Many had PTSD and trauma as well. Heather Stur wrote a great book, Beyond Combat, which very definitely makes that point.

Werner: Jay Maloney's Solo makes the point as well. He was a medic and his friend Sharon, a nurse, was killed during a rocket attack on their hospital. Women were not safe. If you're getting mortared, you're in combat. Gender isn't relevant. Men and women experience same trauma and share a lot of the same problems.

MwA: Young women also served as DJs and often found themselves walking a fine line between Division Command guidelines (censorship) and GI requests that might get the broadcasts pulled. Doug, you deal with that in your Solo "Chain of Fools." The brass hated what they called "subversive" music, especially a renegade DJ?

Bradley: AFVN broadcast out of Saigon and he'd burst into their signal, "Change your radio to this frequency!" And we would! I was sure he'd get nailed. He fooled with the playlist and played the music we all wanted to hear.

The women listened to his music as well and he'd have them go into the women's latrines and read what was written in the stalls. He'd tell us, "So-and-so is pushing bad H at ___; I was just there!" And you felt he was there the whole time. I don't know how he got away with it.

MwA: He's a legend!

Bradley: Yes!

MwA: But he only broadcast for three weeks in January 1971!

Bradley: (Laughs) Yes! But it was the longest three weeks in radio history!

MwA: One final thing you discovered?

Both: That although there is no definitive Vietnam soundtrack, many of the favorites for younger vets in Afghanistan and Kuwait and the Mideast are the same: Creedence and Bruce and Hendrix.